BEIRUT, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah on Friday rejected the U.S. condition to start talks with Hezbollah if it acknowledges the state of Israel, the party's TV station Al-Manar reported.

"The U.S. condition of acknowledging Israel to open dialogue with us is rejected," Nasrallah told crowds of Shiite Moslems gathered in the southern suburbs of Beirut this evening to mark the birthday of Prophet Mohammed.

"As long as Hezbollah exists, the generations of our people could never acknowledge the state of Israel which is a hostile terrorist entity," Nasrallah vowed.

He said that the U.S. set two conditions to start talks with Hezbollah, "acknowledging Israel and abandoning violence," and what they meant by abandoning violence is giving up the resistance.

"The resistance is our dignity, our honor and our existence," he stressed.

He added that the U.S. wants to start talks because all its plans in the region have failed, "they could not submit Syria despite the siege they imposed, and Iran grew stronger," he said.

The U.S. does not want to start dialogue "for moral reasons," but because its main objective is the acknowledgment of the state of Israel.

Nasrallah said "if we believe that we are strong, and we put our hands together, we can defeat this (Israeli) entity and eliminate it from existing."

He added that if the U.S. is backing Israel, "God is backing us, and was backing us during the July war and Gaza war."

The Lebanese Shiite armed group Hezbollah fought a devastating 34-day war with Israel in July 2006, and vowed to keep its arms to resist Israel as long as the latter poses a threat in the region.